Re: Q: communication and discussions with developers

Lucas Nussbaum <[email protected]> Mon, 23 Mar 2026 09:23:44 +0100

Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.devel.vote
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

On 21/03/26 at 17:23 +0100, Sruthi Chandran wrote:
> While we all know, mails are our primary means of communication, but mails
> does lead to a lot of misunderstandings and result in unnecessary flame
> wars. Depending on how volatile the situation is, I would try to have some
> online meetings of the stakeholders wherever possible. I think short online
> meetings would be far productive than spending hours on flame wars on
> mailing lists with no result. But I do know this is not feasible always,
> sometimes we would have to have input from the larger community and then, we
> would have to rely on mailing lists. Even then, I would try to my best to
> minimize the misunderstandings.

Hi,

I think that profound mailing list discussions and flamewars are two
very different things. Mailing list discussions are a good way to
discuss an issue while giving people some time to think about it and
slowly build an opinion, giving everyone the opportunity to bring facts,
etc.

While those discussions occasionnally diverge into more heated
sub-thread, I think that as a community we are doing a reasonable job at
moderating ourselves.

Of course, I acknowledge that mailing list discussions take time.
Sometimes we have had people posting summaries to help people catch up
on the discussion. And I'd like to explore auto-generating such
summaries using AI. (see an example at
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2026/01/msg00235.html )

On the other hand, online meetings require people to attend at a
specific time, which is difficult in a volunteer-based context like
Debian; summarizing them in written form is a very hard task that is
rarely done (and AI is not that helpful for that at this point);
are harder to follow and contribute to for non-native english speakers,
or people who are less comfortable speaking in public.

Can you point to recent discussions that you would describe as "spending
hours on flame wars on mailing lists with no result"?
And recent discussions where you feel that an online meeting would have
been a better way to reach a result?

Best,

Lucas

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